A term often used disparagingly to describe urban areas inhabited by impoverished people or people of the same ethnic background, who are kept separated from the rest of the population. The original "guetto" - an Italian word - was a neighborhood in Venice where Jews were forced to live starting in the sixteenth century. For several centuries, the term ghetto refered exclusively to segregated Jewish enclaves in European cities. In the twentieth century, as studies appeared that analyzed African Americans in urban areas of the United States, the term adopted a more socioeconomic implication - in this political context, ghetto suggests communities comprised of poor, nonwhite people, places where the struggle to survive, criminal activity and violence linked to poverty and exclusion are ever-present aspects of the social landscape.